After obtaining a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) in 1905, Whipple began in 1908 a study of bile pigments. This led to his interest in the body’s manufacture of the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, which is also an important constituent in the production of bile pigments. In 1920 he demonstrated that liver as a dietary factor greatly enhances hemoglobin regeneration in dogs. He also carried out experiments in artificial anemia (1923–25), which established iron as the most potent inorganic factor involved in the formation of red blood cells.

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Dec. 2, 1885 Boston, Mass., U.S. Feb. 25, 1950 Brookline, Mass. American physician who received (with George Whipple and William Murphy) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934 for the introduction of a raw-liver diet in the treatment of pernicious anemia, which was previously an...

Feb. 6, 1892 Stoughton, Wis., U.S. Oct. 9, 1987 Brookline, Mass. American physician who with George R. Minot in 1926 reported success in the treatment of pernicious anemia with a liver diet. The two men shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George H. Whipple, whose research...

...early 1920s, George R. Minot, one of the many brilliant investigators that Harvard University has contributed to medical research, became interested in work being done by the American pathologist George H. Whipple on the beneficial effects of raw beef liver in severe experimental anemia. With a Harvard colleague, William P. Murphy, he decided to investigate the effect of raw liver in patients...

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(1878-1976). American pathologist George H. Whipple discovered how to reverse the effects of a type of anemia-a lack of red blood cells-in dogs that had been bled excessively. He found that feeding the dogs raw liver dramatically raised their red blood cell counts. This discovery led the American physicians George R. Minot and William P. Murphy to develop the first effective treatment for humans with pernicious anemia, which had been a fatal disease. For this major advance, Whipple, Minot, and Murphy won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934.